12/09/2008 @ 12:01AM

In Depth: America's Fastest-Dying Towns

The data come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s three-year American Community Survey, which gathered findings between 2005 and 2007 and ranks cities, towns and Census-designated places (CDPs) with populations between 20,000 and 65,000. We tracked four metrics: income growth, the rate of domestic in-migration, the change in poverty and the percentage of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

5. Austintown, Ohio

It’s a major problem for small towns when their economy is tied to a larger city in decline. Such is the case for Austintown, a western suburb of collapsing Youngstown. Like its big brother, Austintown has seen jobs drop since 2000. In-migration has fallen drastically, from 5% in 2000 to 0.6% in 2007, and the area has gone from a middle-class suburb with a moderate poverty rate of 8.8% to one with 13.8%.